the fashion among Oriental despots. From the time of the death of Mazarin, Louis determined he would never have another prime minister. He himself, like Napoleon after him, would be the head and motive power of the whole of the governmental and social machinery. He kept his word with singular patience and pertinacity, and working harder probably than any sovereign had worked, since the days of Philip II., never permitted a minister, not even Louvois, to rise above the merest departmental independence. The result was inevitable. A commonplace man himself, without insight, without originality, without independence of mind, he could not inspire genius, and could not tolerate it if he found it. He wanted diligence and accuracy, not genius and statesmanship, clerks not ministers of state, and he got what he wanted. It is significant that in all departments of administration except one, when he had used up the men whom Richelieu and Mazarin had left to him, he found no others to take their places. In diplomacy alone France remained unrivalled to the end of the century, the one department of which Louis himself was complete master, and in the conduct of which he was thoroughly competent to take the lead. [Sidenote: =His great kingly qualities.=] But in spite of his deficiencies in the higher qualities of statesmanship, not Aristides better deserved his title of the Just, than did Louis XIV. that of _le Grand Monarque_. It was essentially as a king that Louis was great. No sovereign of modern days has had the kingly gifts in such rich profusion. Dignity without awkwardness, courtesy without familiarity, gallantry without coarseness, a winning manner, ready tact, chivalrous bearing, refined mind, and modest demeanour, made the young king at once the pride of the French court and the boast of the French nation. But something more than this was required to make him the pattern and type of European kingship. It was not merely that his social insight brought instinctively to his lips the word which, within the bounds of good breeding, would prove most pleasing or most effective to those whom he wished to impress, or that his knowledge of character taught him almost intuitively the best mode of approaching those whom he wished to win. It was not only that his elaborate and punctual care for the etiquette and ceremonial of the court could not fail to affect the mind with a sense of the perfection of regal state, and attract it by a polished order of courtly magnificence. [Sidenote: =His theory of kingship.=] Versailles was not the first court in Europe to be distinguished by the splendour of its ceremonial, and the refinement of its manners, but Louis XIV. was the first great sovereign in Europe who made the perfection of his court an essential part of his system of policy. When the Popes had ceased to be the common fathers of Western Christendom, they applied themselves to make the seat of their power the centre of the wider realm of art.